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ADDRESS 



AT MEETING OF THE 



Phi Beta Kappa Society 



DR. ALBERT SHAW, 



HELD IN 



RICHMOND, VIRGINIA, APRIL 13, 1904. 



r 






. £53 



ADDRESS 

AT MEETING OF THE 

Phi Beta Kappa Society 

BY 

DR. ALBERT SHAW, 



HELD IN 



RICHMOND, VIRGINIA, APRIL 13, 1904. 



Last year, with a company of friends, it was my good fortune to 
pay a brief visit to Williamsburg and its venerable college, and at 
the conclusion of an informal programme of speeches, it fell to my 
lot to remind the assembled company of the fact, apparently over- 
looked, that the calendar date was the exact one hundredth anni- 
versary of the conclusion of the treaty which embodied the greatest 
single act of our American statesmanship — namely, the purchase of 
the Louisiana Territory. 

The American who, above all others, faced the responsibility of 
that purchase, and to whom the chief honor is due, was Mr. Jeffer- 
son, one of William and Mary's illustrious graduates. An indis- 
pensable part in the great transaction was borne by another of 
William and Mary's famous graduates — namely, Mr. Monroe — sent 
by JefTerson as a special envoy to negotiate for the purchase of New 
Orleans and the strip of territory on the east bank of the Mississippi. 
It was a hundred years ago last April that Mr. Monroe arrived in 
Paris and found the French government unexpectedly ready to 
discuss the object of his mission. But whereas he had been sent 
with definite instructions regarding the purchase of a comparatively 
small strip of territory, he found that Napoleon had directed his 
finance minister, Monsieur Barbe Marbois, to sell us the whole 
French empire west of the Mississippi, and thus to double the area 
of the United States. The negotiations lasted onl}' a few days, and 
on the 30th of April, 1803, the treaty was duly signed, Mr. Monroe 
and Mr. Livingston acting with the instinct and courage of states- 
men upon their own unaided initiative. 



It was more than two months before any inkHng of the great 
transaction reached President Jefferson and his Secretary of State, 
Mr. Madison. The news arrived at the very moment when Mr. 
Jefferson was dispatching for exploration of the upper regions of 
the Louisiana country, and the Northwest beyond the Rocky moun- 
tain divide, two young Virginians whose achievements were destined 
to have a growing fame and appreciation — Meriwether Lewis and 
WiUiam Clark. Imagine the excitement of these two intrepid and 
patriotic young explorers when they learned that they were to be 
pathfinders across our own virgin territory rather than that of 
European empires ! And try to imagine the strength and breadth 
of mind of men who, under conditions so different from those of our 
own time, had the largeness of view to think in terms of continents 
rather than in those of mere provinces. When in the course of pro- 
tracted negotiations, also at Paris, it was decided five or six years 
ago to retain the Philippines by cession from Spain, long cabled 
dispatches were sent every night to the State Department at Wash- 
ington, after which the President and his advisers held a conference, 
followed the next morning by minute cabled instructions to the 
American commissioners at Paris. Mr. Monroe had to act without 
home advice; and he belonged, moreover, to the party of strict con- 
stitutional construction. But he recognized the hand of national 
destiny, and he had no doubt of Mr. Jefferson's disposition and 
ability to carry the treaty to its consummation. 

At the end of this month there opens at St. Louis the great ex- 
position whose object it is to exemplify the amazing progress that 
Mr. Jefferson foresaw as a result of our acquisition of the trans- 
Mississippi country. Next year there is to be a creditable exposi- 
tion in Oregon to commemorate the one hundredth anniversary of 
Jefferson's expedition under command of Lewis and Clark. Still 
two years later is to come the celebration of the noteworthy com- 
pletion of three hundred years of English-speaking men in the 
Commonwealth of Virginia. 

In these great events of the opening decade of our twentieth 
century, Mr. Jefferson stands forth as in many respects the most 
conspicuous figure. A multiplicity of speeches, brochures, bio- 
graphical studies and historical reviews of the Jeffersonian period 
has within the last four or five years attested the very great revival 
of interest in the career of this eminent Virginian. I could not 
hope to add anything, not indeed so much as a single suggestion, 
concerning Mr. Jefferson's personality or public career to that 



which has become the common stock of knowledge here in Virginia, 
where the great sons of the Commonwealth are kept in memory by 
accomplished speakers and writers. All that I shall venture to do 
is to attempt some reflections upon what I may call the carrying 
power and the vitality o{ Mr. Jefferson's political opinions and doc- 
trines. I fear I shall not be able to do this with much enlivenment; 
but if what I have to say is serious rather than entertaining, you 
will bear with me, because it is Jefferson's birthday, and because I 
feel deeply the honor of being asked to speak here on such an oc- 
casion. 

It is not necessary to agree with every opinion Mr. Jefferson ever 
expressed, or to applaud every attitude or act of his public career, 
in order to be counted among those who admire him sincerely and 
profoundly, and who find his writings a marvelous repository of 
political wisdom and knowledge. His was a very long period of 
active statesmanship and public influence. That period reached its 
zenith in the first term of his incumbency of the office of President, 
just a hundred years ago. He entered the Presidency with a thor- 
oughness of training and a ripeness of experience beyond that of 
any other man who has ever attained this high office. As might 
have been expected, his first inaugural address was one of great 
dignity and elevation of sentiment — a stately utterance, a model and 
a classic, in form and breadth and serenity of view. He had been 
called to guide the affairs of what he described as " a rising nation, 
spread over a wide and fruitful land, traversing all the seas with the 
rich productions of their industry, engaged in commerce with na- 
tions who feel power and forget right, advancing rapidly to destinies 
beyond the reach of mortal eye." 

It was, indeed, a wide and fruitful land. But Mr. Jefferson him- 
self was ordained by Providence to make it vastly wider, and in 
many ways to enhance its fruitfulness. Our population at that time 
was only a little more than five million, and our domain was bounded 
by the Mississippi river on the West, and by the European colonies 
of Florida and Louisiana on the South. He lived to see our popu- 
lation grow to about twelve millions, with the Florida Purchase 
consummated and with every reason to believe that in due time the 
joint occupation of the Oregon country by the United States and 
England would terminate in our acknowledged control of the region 
traversed by Lewis and Clark all the way to the Pacific ocean. 
But, as I have said, it is Mr. Jefferson's views rather than his 
achievements that belong to my theme this evening. 



Though of a philosopliical and reflective habit, and hini^^ff a 
•diligent student of the past experience of men grouped in poHtical 
communities, Mr. Jeflerson's own eyes were usually turned forward 
rather than backward. His was an eminently practical mind; and 
he used history chiefly as the touchstone by which to test current 
opinions and tendencies for the sake of an ever better future. All 
political principles and theories, all the history of the past, all the 
implements and methods of statecraft, were studied by Mr. Jeffer- 
son with the one concrete object of enabling him and his colleagues 
(to cjuote from that same inaugural address), "to steer with safety 
the vessel in which we are all embarked amidst the conflicting ele- 
ments of a troubled world." 

Now, just as Mr. Jefferson himself examined the doctrines of the 
English and French philosophers, humanitarians, and economists, 
with a view to the establishment of his own opinions, so I find my- 
self at present disposed to consider not so much the problems that 
lay before our countrymen a hundred years ago as our own prob- 
lems of to-day, except as those of the former period may have some 
bearing upon the issues that confront us now as we have fairly 
crossed the threshold of a new century and are casting about us for 
-wise courses, still finding ourselves "amidst the conflicting ele- 
ments of a troubled world." And I have asked myself: What 
valid, trustworthy, and still enduring basis have the principles of 
Mr. Jefferson as applied to our own present and immediate future? 

'Have we outlived his generalizations ? Was he, to a large ex- 
tent, superficial and specious? Was he a doctrinaire in a sense 
that should now cause us to distrust his practical conclusions ? Was 
he sentimental and visionary? Was he hasty in pronouncing rad- 
ical and sweeping verdicts? Did he allow his love of glittering 
expressions and abstract dicta to impair his judgment? Did he 
reason to permanent conclusions from isolated instances or merely 
transient phenomena, and thus violate scientific methods? 

Political philosophers come and go. Half a dozen new ones, 
who were the vogue, ten or twenty, or even five years ago, are now 
confessedly obsolete. They do not stand the test of time. Yet. 
there must be some principles of government, of national policy, of 
social and political ethics, approaching nearly enough to essential 
truth and justice to meet the fluctuations of at least one century, 
and to hold some rightful claim to popular confidence and allegiance. 
Men must hold by some opinions; what, then, shall they be? 

Many things in outward circumstances have changed more pro- 



foundly in the past one hundred years than in a thousand years 
preceding. The production of wealth, for example, has been 
greater by far since the death of Mr. Jefferson than were'the total 
accumulations of the world through all the ages down to that date. 
Moreover, there has been most marvelous development of popula- 
tion; and every one feels that we are entering upon new and un- 
known periods of transition at an ever-accelerating pace. What 
landmarks can we keep in view, or by what charts and compasses 
shall we be guided as we embark on momentous new voyages? In 
these inquiries, I have in mind, not so much the world at large as 
the people of the Un'ted States; and I have particularly in mind 
two or three lines of questioning. One of these has to do with our 
national position and policy, as respects other nations and the world 
at large. Another, with some of our internal problems of govern- 
ment and politics, and perhaps a third, with the economic and social 
status of the individual citizen — ^the outlook, so to speak, for the 
average man under fast-changing methods of production and dis- 
tribution. And a fourth might have to do with the relation of the 
State itself to industry and economic society. 

Further, in alluding to some of these present-day problems, I 
would like to make test, incidentally, at least, of the doctrines and 
opinions of Thomas Jefferson, to see if they hold good, and if Jef- 
ferson is still entitled to be looked upon as a prophet and a guide. I 
shall not try to use any oratorical art whatsoever to heighten the 
effect of my own conclusions as respects the essential qualities of 
the body of political doctrine taught by Mr. Jefferson ; and I shall 
make haste, therefore, to anticipate some more detailed avowals by 
declaring in advance, and in general terms, my strong belief in Mr. 
Jefferson as an enduring prophet. 

I find myself wondering again and again how that line and lucid 
intelligence of his could, by the time he was thirty years old, in 
provincial Virginia, a hundred and thirty years ago, have become 
so perfectly emancipated. When to-day I re-read his utterances, 
the one thing that impresses me above all else is the freshness, the 
modernity, of his way of looking at everything. The openness and 
the freedom of his mental processes seem to biing him across the 
chasm of the middle of the nineteenth centurj^ to a place with 
thinkers like John Stuart Mill and Hu.xley at their best period. 
Since Jefferson's time, we have had few public men of large vision. 
At least these later statesmen, if endowed by nature with capacity 
to formulate principles, have not enjoyed as favorable opportunities. 



They have been involved in controversies over immediate issues, 
and have been in the position of men in the thick of the woods, 
hindered by the trees from seeing the forest. Compared with Jeffer- 
son, in practical statesmanship, John Bright seems a limited though 
a congenial spirit; and Mr. Gladstone, a similarly versatile and ca- 
pacious mind, but with prejudices of class and creed that yielded 
only painfully and slowly through a half-century of experience. 
Our own Websters, and Calhouns, and Clays seem merely a part of 
a past epoch. Jefferson's thinking seems to reach to the things of to- 
day, while those men of the forties and fifties appear almost as 
remote as the figures of Plutarch's time. Lincoln's thought had, 
doubtless, much of the quality that survives, and, among our later 
men, I think you will some day give a larger place to Seward than 
either North or South has yet accorded him. But for flexibility of 
mind, and for perennial freshness of doctrine and statement, it seems 
to me Jefferson must still bear the palm. 

It must be remembered that the launching of a new and powerful 
nation has not been a frequent occurrence in the history of the 
world. The erection of a sovereign State to take its place as a 
member of the family of nations has almost invariably been a matter 
of sheer force, of bloody violence, of titanic struggle, rather than 
one of a calm and philosophic shaping of political institutions. 
Thus, never elsewhere has either the forming of a new State or the 
political remaking of an old one been accompanied by any such 
magnificent setting forth of the practical and theoretical principles 
of government, of politics, of jurisprudence, of international law, 
and of foreign and domestic statesmanship, as that which attended 
the formative period in the United States. 

During this memorable period, George Washington held the first 
place as a man of action and of noble and sagacious leadership, 
while in all deference it may be said that he held second place as a 
man of reflection and as the exponent of distinctively American 
opinion. His colleague and friend, Thomas Jefferson, held a place 
second to Washington only as a leader in actual affairs, and a place 
unquestionably the very first as a formulator of opinion and an ex- 
ponent of our American system of popular democratic government. 
And all this I say, without abatement of one particle of the admira- 
tion I entertain for the j^owerful statesmanship of Alexander Ham- 
ilton, for the learning and persuasive logic of James Madison, for 
the wisdom and greatness of John Jay, and for the constructive 
intellect and priceless services of John Marshall. How many others 



there were in that noble company of Americans, many of them 
young men, who were brought to great elevation of view, as evinced 
in their work in the Continental Congress, then later in the discus- 
sions that controlled the framing and adoption of the Constitution, 
and in the executive, legislative, and judicial acts and decisions, and 
the diplomacy, of the period that ended, let us say, with the death 
of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, who passed away on the 
same Fourth of July, seventy-eight years ago. 

Of some of these men — as of Washington, and perhaps Hamil- 
ton — it must be said that they were " born great." Most of them 
had "greatness thrust upon them " by the sheer force of circum- 
stances that developed their best capacities. These men were com- 
pelled to study the position of their young republic, both as regards 
its domestic structure, and also as related to the world at large, in 
a period when the struggles and convulsions of Europe were stirring 
men's minds and causing them to see things in new lights, with 
renunciation of old prejudices. Thus they were lifted above the 
commonplace. It was impossible to go on in ruts. Jefferson and 
Benjamin Franklin must, I think, in any case, have "achieved 
greatness " without the stimulus of exceptional circumstances, 
through the inherent power of minds of rare energy and of still 
more rare versatility-^to which, in both cases, was added the gift of 
abstract and philosophical reasoning, and, finally, a touch of that 
something we call genius and do not try to explain. 

In the very nature of things a new English-speaking common- 
wealth, emerging in that particular period, must have formulated 
for itself some doctrines and general opinions. The circumstances 
were of a well-balanced sort as respects what one may call the rela- 
tive exigencies of a domestic and foreign problems. Thus our states- 
men were able to work out schemes, both of doctrine and of practical 
policy, that in spite of vicissitudes and profound changes of the 
nineteenth century have had momentum enough to project them- 
selves, without much serious deflection, across the line of a new 
century. And now, if I mistake not, the country has reached a 
juncture where, once more the relative exigencies of domestic and 
external problems not only permit us, but also compel us to try 
again to take our bearings as respects underlying principles and 
national attitudes and policies. 

To the wholesome and normal mind some principles and creeds 
are necessary — if for no other reason than to serve as a working 
hypothesis. And it is eminently true in the conduct of public af- 



fairs, that for wise results there must be some admitted jM-inciples 
of government and some fixed landmarks of policy. Otherwise, 
disastrous mistakes will be made and recognized only too late. The 
■word policy, as applied to a nation's affairs, though broad enough 
to include all general and fixed trends of action, may well be re- 
stricted to external relationships. In my use of it I have in mind 
more particularly the intentions and aspirations, as well as the actual 
conduct of a nation, in its dealings with other countries and its plans 
as to the world at large. 

For some countries the problems of foreign policy are so delicate 
and difficult that they cannot very well be discussed openly. Thus 
at times British, German, and Russian policy must be learned by 
inference rather than by any frank or responsible avowal. The 
United States in this respect has occupied a favorable and fortunate 
position, and we have usually found it to be both safe and wise to 
discuss freely and openly the principles having to do with our rela- 
tions toward other countries. During the past century American 
policy has had its pivot in what we commonly call the "Monroe 
Doctrine," and what the European nations refer to as "Monroeism." 
Those who find it sufficient, in discussing the Monroe Doctrine, to 
recall the exact wording of a particular utterance formulated by 
John Ouincy Adams, as Secretary of State m President Monroe's 
second administration, fail to appreciate the underlying fact. This 
precise utterance did not make our American policy, but was simply 
a timely and valuable expression of a policy that had been shaping 
itself for a quarter of a century previous, that had found a partial — 
and, in so far, authoritative — expression in Washington's farewell 
address. 

If I have studied aright the history of American policy, it was 
Thomas Jefferson, as Washington's first Secretary of State, and as 
our foremost exponent of national doctrine and principle, who — 
incomparably more than any one else — thought out, developed, 
and expressed the ideas that we have in mind when we mention the 
Monroe Doctrine. It was he whose teachings made this doctrine 
the one great fixed landmark to guide us in our relations with the 
world at large. 

As the Louisiana Purchase was the foremost single act of domestic 
statesmanship in our national history during the last century, so the 
evolution of the Monroe Doctrine was the one great feature of our 
statesmanship as it dealt with external affairs. It was an achieve- 



ment of such overshadowing greatness that in comparison with it 
everything else falls into the background. 

What, in its fundamental aspect, is the Monroe Doctrine ? Jeffer- 
son saw the group of European nations engaged in almost inces- 
sant warfare with one another changing boundaries through con- 
quest making and breaking alliances, struggling painfully for release 
from the shackles of medieval systems, in response to new ideas of 
popular progress; and through it all he foresaw with wonderful 
clearness the gradual evolution of a better order of things and the 
ultimate establishment of a peaceable, modern, concert of European 
nations, working its way by hard experience out of the old military 
balance of power. He anticipated the breaking up of the Turkish 
Empire and the extension of the European system across the Med- 
iterranean into Africa and beyond the Bosphorus and the Caucasus 
into Western Asia. He had no misgivings at all about the future 
outworking of the spirit of human liberty and of democratic and 
industrial progress in those bloodstained regions of the Old World. 

But, meanwhile, he conceived of a new American world based on 
principles of equality and freedom, and beginning its political career 
at a point of human emancipation which it might well take Europe 
two centuries to attain. And he believed that this new and benefi- 
cent system in the Western Hemisphere should be allowed to work 
out its destiny without alliances or entanglements with the Euro- 
pean nations, both for the happiness of our own people and also 
for the subsequent benefit of the rest of mankind. I do not say 
that Jefferson was alone in entertaining this great conception, yet I 
have not the slightest doubt that he held it, in all its wide and 
varied aspects, with far more clearness of vision than any other 
man — just as I know that he expressed it better than anybody else 
either before his day or since, down to our own time. 

While we were still bounded by the Mississippi river on the 
West, and enclosed on three sides by the territorial possessions of 
European powers — with all of Central and South America, and 
every dot of the West Indies held as crown colonies by European 
sovereigns — Jefferson saw more vividly, and announced with more 
boldness and definiteness than any public man at Washington has 
ventured to assert down to our own day, the necessary ultimate 
dominance of the United States, and the high policy that must be 
followed in pursuance of a faith in our manifest destiny. He be- 
lieved that the whole Western jHemisphere must be brought out 
from under European control, and that the American Republic 



10 

must assume the leadership in the development of democratic insti- 
tutions throughout the New World. 

In 1805 he declared : "I know that the acquisition of Louisiana 
has been disapproved by some, from a candid apprehension that 
the enlargement of our territory would endanger its Union. But 
who can limit the extent to which the federative principle may ope- 
rate effectively? The larger our association, the less will it be 
shaken by local passions; and, in any view, is it not better that the 
opposite bank of the Mississippi should be settled by our own 
brethren and children than by strangers of another family ? With 
which shall we be most likely to live in harmony and friendly inter- 
course?" 

So strongly did he feel the necessity of a period of isolation in 
the working out of our own experiment, that he went so far at times 
as to say frankly that he would like to see us as wholly cut off from 
European influence as China itself then was. This, of course, was 
for the sake of that distinctive growth of an American nationality, 
and an American system, for which he believed a period of seclus- 
ion and of obscurity might be valuable. He never, of course, for- 
got the ultimate reaction of our example upon the character of the 
European countries. Thus, a little more than a hundred years ago, 
he wrote to an American statesman : "A just and solid republican 
government maintained here will be a standing monument and ex- 
ample for the aim and imitation of the people of other countries." 
In another letter, fifteen years earlier, a year before the framing of 
the Constitution, Mr. Jefferson had shown the breadth of his view 
by writing : "Our confederacy must be viewed as the nest from 
which all America, North and South, is to be peopled," 

He was fearful at that time lest the Spaniards should be too weak 
to hold South America. His view on that subject is too interesting 
to be allowed to be forgotten. He did not believe that the Spanish 
colonies were capable of republican self-government, and he 
thought it best that they should remain quietly under the domina- 
tion of Spain until our own population should have been sufficiently 
advanced to gain the territory from the Spaniards " piece by piece," 
to quote his own phrase. Thus, even as early as 1786, Jefferson 
foresaw the inevitability of our expansion, until we had acquired 
the Floridas, the Louisiana country, Texas, and the great Spanish 
domain of California and Northern Mexico. 

With some prescience, seemingly, of the infelicity of our having 



11 

to wrest such territory away from a Spanish-speaking American 
republic, such as Mexico became, he had hoped that Spain would 
hold on until we could emancipate the territory piece by piece and 
develop it into happy, self-governing States in our own confedera- 
tion. In these days of the railroad, the telegraph, the fast steam- 
ship and the daily newspaper, large confederacies seem easily enough 
possible. But we must not underestimate the boldness of Thomas 
Jefferson in declaring, a hundred and fifteen years ago, that it would 
be feasible not only to bring the whole of North America under our 
one federal government, but even possible to bring in South America 
also. In later years, when problems of practical statesmanship, 
rather than the bold survey of future destiny more habitually occu- 
pied his mind, he contented himself with strong declarations in favor 
of the acquisition of Cuba by the United States, and of the annex- 
ation of Canada at the first convenient opportunity. 

Undoubtedly it was his opinion — indeed, he expressed it often in 
private letters — that the war of 1812 would result in our taking and 
keeping Canada as compensation for our many and substantial 
grievances against England. This was not due to any unfriendli- 
ness towards Great Britain, but to the belief that it would make for 
stable equilibrium all around, and be better for everybody concerned. 
He looked forward to a confederated North America, and to a 
South America at least wholly independent of Europe and develop- 
ing under our friendly auspices. He wrote to Baron von Humboldt 
in 18 13 as follows: 

"The European nations constitute a separate division of the 
globe, their treaties make them part of a distinct system; they have 
a set of interests of their own in which it is our business never to 
engage ourselves. America has a hemisphere to itself It must 
have its separate system of interests, which must not be subordi- 
nated to those of Europe. The insulated state in which nature has 
placed the American continent shojild so far avail it that no spark 
of war kindled in the other quarters of the globe should be wafted 
across the wide oceans which separate us from them." 

To another foreign correspondent he wrote several years later: 

" Nothing is so important as that America shall separate herself 
from the systems of Europe and establish one of her own. Our cir- 
cumstances, our pursuits, our interests are distinct; the principles 
of our policy should be so also. All entanglements with that quarter 
of the globe should be avoided if we mean that peace and justice 
shall be the polar stars of American societies." 



12 

Finally, before the great enunciation of the Monroe Doctrine in 
1823, President Monroe wisely consulted the venerable statesman 
then in retirement at Monticello, and he received from Mr. Jefferson 
an ever-memorable letter, from which I may quote the following 
sentences: 

"Our first and fundamental maxim should be never to entangle 
ourselves in the broils of Europe. Our second, never to suffer 
Europe to intermeddle with cis-Atlantic affairs. America, North 
and South, has a set of interests distinct from those of Europe and 
peculiarly her own. She should, therefore, have a system of her 
own, separate and apart from that of Europe." 

This, all things considered, is perhaps the best and clearest state- 
ment, as it is the boldest, that has ever been made of the doctrine 
.so repeatedly set forth by Jefferson, though nominally attributed, 
on account of one official utterance, to one of Jefferson's most stead- 
fast disciples. Fifteen years earlier than this, in writing to Governor 
Claiborne, who was then administering the Louisiana Territory at 
New Orleans — as if in prophetic forecast of actual applications of 
his principles of policy — Jefferson had said, respecting Cuba and 
Mexico: "We consider their interests and ours as the same, and 
that the object of both must be to exclude all European influence 
from this hemisphere." Nearly sixty years later we applied this 
specific principle to the case of Mexico, and expelled a French 
army and an Austrian dynasty. 

Mr. Seward, one of the greatest successors of Jefferson, and one 
of the few of our more recent statesmen who have seemed to com- 
prehend the principles of American policy, had the honor to enforce 
our views in the case of Mexico. The reasons would have seemed 
ample, a very few years later, either before or after the ' ' VirginiMs' ' 
incident, for the enforcement of that principle in the case of Cuba. 
But the views that then prevailed were rather those of legalists and 
diplomatists, than those of masters of American policy in the large 
sense. And so it remained for our country, in a better period, and 
in the fullness of time, to enforce the Jeffersonian principles of pol- 
icy in the case of an island concerning which Jefferson in 1823 had 
written : "I candidly confess that I have ever looked on Cuba as the 
most interesting addition which could ever be made to our system 
of States. ' ' 

It must be borne in mind that Mr. Jefferson was always con- 
sciously working out a permanent rather than a temporary line of 



13 

policy, and that he always had in mind the rapid extension and 
great growth of the nation. Thus, writing to Baron von Humboldt 
not long after the census of 1810, which had shown our population 
to be a little more than seven millions, he declared: 

"In fifty years more the United States alone will contain fifty 
millions of inhabitants, and fifty years are soon gone over. The 
peace of 1763 is within that period. I was then twenty years old, 
and, of course, remember well all the transactions of the war pre- 
ceding it, and you will live to see the period equally ahead of us ; 
and the numbers which will then be spread over the other parts of the 
American hemisphere catching long before that the principles of 
jar portion of it, and concurring with us in the maintenance of the 
same system." 

Humboldt actually lived to see the population of the United 
States alone more than thirty millions, and to see the independent 
South American States living under constitutions modeled after 
ours, and concurring in the main in our views of a distinctive Amer- 
ican international policy. 

In his population estimates, Mr. Jefferson had probably calculated 
upon our union with Canada, which would have resulted in the 
much more rapid development of that region. Writing to James 
Monroe, in 1801, he declared : 

" However our present interests may restram us within our own 
limits, it is impossible not to look forward to distant times when our 
rapid multiplication will expand itself beyond those limits and cover 
the whole northern, if not the southern, continent, with a people 
speaking the same language, governed in similar forms, and by 
similar laws." 

What other man, in 1801, foresaw so clearly the great growth of 
the English-speaking races and the widespread establishment of 
their social and political institutions ? Writing to Mr. Madison on 
the Florida question in iSog, Jefferson declared : 

"We should then have only to include the North (meaning 
Canada), in our confederacy, and we should have such an empire 
for liberty as she has never surveyed since the creation ; and I am 
persuaded no constitution was ever before so well calculated as ours 
for extensive empire and self-government." 

It is not necessary to pause to inquire how far Jefferson's specific 
forecasts have been verified in the course of a hundred years ; but 
it is to be remarked that he was dealing conciously with a larger 
future then a single century. In short, the statesmen of to-day. 



14 

for large, fresh, and sweeping views towards the still future horizon, 
should look through the lenses provided by Thomas Jefferson. It 
remains true, as he pointed out, that the policy of Europe is essent- 
ially belligerent and aggressive, while the policy of America is 
essentially pacific. 

It remains true, moreover, that it must be a principal aim of our 
policy to promote the development of the Canadian half of North 
America in harmony with that of our own half, with a view to ulti- 
mate voluntary political union. If Jefferson were alive, he would 
still hold this to be the largest unfulfilled aspiration to be noted in 
the items of a future public policy. 

In view of the great development of our Pacific seaboard, it 
would have been in strict keeping with all of Mr. Jefferson's views 
to advocate the territorial acquisition of the Isthmian strip that 
connects North and South America with a \'iew to cutting a ship 
canal on our own soil. Although such a costly project was by no 
means ripe for action in his day, Mr. Jefferson more than once ex- 
pressed lively interest in the possibility of an interoceanic canal. 
And, let it be said with the utmost emphasis, nothing would have 
been further from Mr. Jefferson's views than the placing of this 
strictly American enterprise under the political auspices of the great 
powers of Europe, although such a plan was proposed in the 
Bulwer-Clayton treaty by an American Secretary of State in 1850, 
and again proposed in 1900. Fortunately, the preponderant senti- 
ment of the country was aroused to a perception of the vital 
bearings of the question; and we may rest assured that Americans 
will henceforth remember Jefferson's idea that the Gulf of Mexico 
and the Caribbean Sea are essentially American waters, and that an 
American inter-oceanic canal must come under the full control of 
the American political system. 

Jefferson advocated ample coast defenses, and a navy adequate to 
our purposes of protection. If, at one time he seemed not to favor 
'an ambitious naval policy, it was for immediate reasons which he 
ably explained. The naval predominance of England was so great 
that we could not then hope to rival England on the sea and an in- 
ferior navy would be likely to be sacrificed in a British war. John 
Adams, himself the staunch advocate of a vigorous naval policy, 
declared in his old age that he had always regarded Mr. Jefferson 
as the Father of the American Navy. 

A study of Mr. Jefierson's views, with reference to their applica- 
tion to our existing conditions would probably lead to the conclus- 



15 

ion that he would now favor the steady development of our new 
navy, but would limit the standing army as closely as possible. As 
early as 1799 he wrote to Elbridge Gerry : 

"I am for relying for internal defence on our militia solely, till 
actual invasion." 

But several years later, in correspondence with some one else, he 
made this very notable utterance : "None but an armed nation 
can dispense with a standing army. To keep ours armed and dis- 
ciplined is therefore at all times important." 

And in his last annual message, in 1808, as his second President- 
ial term was ending, he declared to Congress : 

" For a people who are free, and who mean to remain so, a well- 
organized and armed militia is their best security." 

You will remember that in 18 13, several years after his retire- 
ment, in the light of our current experiences in the pending war 
with Great Britain, he wrote to James Monroe that " We must make 
military instruction a regular part of collegiate education; we can 
never be safe until this is done." In short, Jefferson believed in a 
citizen soldiery, to be composed, if necessary, of practically all the 
young men in the country, none of whom should have grown up 
without becoming familiar with the use of weapons or without be- 
ing sufficiently drilled and trained to admit of ready organization. 
For the supply of officers he would make sure that young men in 
academies and collegiate institutions should have some especial 
training in military tactics and the art of war. 

After the experience of a hundred years, we have arrived at no 
wiser view than this. While England has begun to talk of con- 
scription and great standing armies, after the continental fashion, it 
behooves us to see clearly our own path and hold fast to the princi- 
ple that ours must be an armed and disciplined nation, which for 
that very reason can dispense with a large standing army. 

The question must naturally arise, what relation our position and 
policy in the Philippines bears to the American policy of isolation 
as set forth by Mr. Jefferson. I shall make no ingenious attempt to 
reconcile one thing with another. It is not necessary to prize con- 
sistency above all else. But in this particular instance, I am unable 
to find any denial, or even any weakening of the Monroe Doctrine 
principle. Mr. Jefferson and his colleagues were dealing with two 
opposing systems, one the European, the other the American. 
These systems had relation to such parts of the world as were at 
that time within the sphere of ordinary commercial intercourse, or 



16 

were related under the principles of international law, recognizing 
one another by the exchange of ambassadors or other agents. At 
that time there was little trading in the Pacific Ocean, the most im- 
portant perhaps being the regular moving of the Spanish galleons 
from Mexico to the Philippines, and vice versa. China and Japan, 
Korea and Siam, had no connection or intercourse with Europe 
and America. Australia had not been colonized. 

A wholly new situation has arisen since then. A new commerce 
has come into existence, and the far East has been aroused from 
the slumber of centuries. With our great Pacific seaboard, we must 
needs be vitally interested in the new commerce and the new affairs 
of the Pacific Ocean and its bordering countries. The Euro- 
pean system remains, and it must continue to dominate Europe, 
Africa and the Western part of Asia. The American system also 
remains, and so long as we are true to the policy laid down b}^ our 
forefathers it will continue to dominate the Western Hemisphere of 
North and South America. But there has been rapidly evolving a 
third system — that of the flir East, or the Pacific — in which 
China and Japan have a great part to play, and in which we also 
have interests, as have several of the European powers. These 
new interests of ours had become important before we had fairly 
recognized them. A war in assertion of the Monroe Doctrine 
brought us temporarily to Manila, and we remained at Manila for 
reasons that had no reference at all to the Monroe Doctrine, but 
rather to our new Pacific interests and responsibilities. 

I have no purpose to mention this topic except by way of these 
passing suggestions. Monroe Doctrine more than ever is the great 
cardinal principle of our policy. Our chief territorial expansion is 
to be in our own hemisphere where conditions favor the settlement 
of English-speaking men. Our position in the Philippines is ex- 
ceptional, and is [)erhaps to be modified in due time to the form of 
a mere friendly protectorate. Of one thing we may be assured, and 
that is that our mission there is destined to be one of beneficence to 
the inhabitants themselves. I must confess myself at a loss to un- 
derstand the logic of those who would (juote the declaration of in- 
dependence as showing conclusively that our presence in the Phil- 
ippines is contrary to Jefferson's principles of democracy and self- 
government. 

Mr. Jefferson had some sense of historical processes, and aLso 
some clear recognition of the need of considering the element of 
time. He pointed out with frequency that circumstances had 



17 

brought our people in the American colonies to a position where 
beyond any other people of any period we were fitted to enter upon 
the experiment of a democratic republican state. Our colonies had 
been growing for more than a century and a half, and had been 
evolving the American citizen and the American self-governing- 
community. Until these two developments had taken place there 
could have been no successful American republic. Even in 1774 
and 1775 Jefferson's views of the inherent rights of men, as respects 
self-government, had to do not with the higher attributes of na- 
tional or imperial sovereignty, but with the practical, every-day 
rights of communities to order their own local affairs and to take 
part in imposing the taxes that they were themselves to pay. It 
was the denial of these ordinary rights of local, concrete self- 
government to the American colonies that led them to the verge of 
a revolution that otherwise would not have been defensible. In 
other words, the American revolution was not, either in Jefferson's 
mind, or in that of any other leader, founded upon abstract concep- ' 
tions of the rights of individual men, but rather upon practical 
grievances. 

The established order of the world required the exercise by some 
accountable government of the responsibilities of sovereignty at 
Manila. In that exercise the United States became the legal suc- 
cessor of Spain. It became incumbent upon us, however, in regard 
to the people themselves, to assert as rapidly as possible our own 
views of the value of individual citizenship and of self-government 
in communities, as a foundation for the larger institutions of the 
province, the State, or the nation. 

Mr. Jefferson's letters to James Madison, Thomas McKeen, 
Governor Claiborne and various others, iust a hundred years ago, 
relating to the gradual evolution of government in the purchased 
Louisiana Territory disclose a practical statesmanship that makes 
it clear even down to the minute details, how Jefferson would have 
approached the task of initiating and developing a government for 
the Philippine Archipelago. And, I may add, that I do not see 
any appreciable difference of philosophy or principle between the 
Jefifersonian views and those which Governors Taft and Wright have 
expressed, and which have been supported at Washington by Pres- 
ident McKinley and his successor, and by Mr. Root as Secretary 
of War. 

We do not show our belief in democracy at home by forcing the 
ballot into the hands of school children, but rather by our definite 



18 

purpose, so to train the school children that in due time they may- 
come into a valuable heritagfe of citizenship. In like manner we 
shall fulfill every duty, and observe every priiiciple of democracy 
in the Philippines if we introduce popular and representative insti- 
tutions just as rapidly as may be consistent with the maintenance 
of order and the enforcement of justice between man and man. 

It is not impossible, furthermore, that our experience in the Phil- 
ij^pines and elsewhere may help us to understand better the evolu- 
tionary character of some of our problems nearer home. We have 
at times found the difficulties confronting- our democratic institutions 
to be so disheartening that we have allowed the pessimists to raise 
their insidious doubts as to the fundamental value of democracy 
and as to the future of our system. Here, again, I do not know 
any wiser teacher to follow than Mr. Jefferson, nor any better dictum 
than that the ultimate cure for the ills of democracy is to be found 
in democracy itself 

In Jefferson's time it required great faith and clear insight to hold 
in an unqualified manner to the novel doctrine of the right-minded- 
ness, capacity and wisdom of the plain people, and to the view that 
government should rest on the broadest possible basis. Rousseau 
and other French writers, it is true, had promulgated such ideas. 
But they argued in the sphere of abstract discussion, and not at all 
in that of practical politics. Such views in England were of slow 
and cautious growth, and even to our own day it is the tax-payer — 
rather than the man — who casts a British ballot, while a single pro- 
prietor may vote in as many different places as he owns property. 
The practical doctrine of democracy, that is tosay, of the plain peo- 
ple, as the depository of political power, the doctrine so firmly held in 
a later period by Abraham Lincoln, was, above all, the Jeffersonian 
doctrine. Of all the men who had lived in the world up to his time, 
he expounded that idea most influentially. It was his leadership 
of a school of American politics and statecraft, more than anything 
else, that gave firm establishment to the broad democratic experi- 
ment in this country. " The only orthodox object," he declared, 
'' of the institution of government, is to secure the greatest degree 
of happiness possible to the general mass of those associated 
under it." 

In his Notes on Virginia, written in 1782, his observations on 
government were in a vein well indicated by the following quota- 
tions : 

" Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of 



19 

the people alone. The people themselves, therefore, are its only 
safe depositories. To render even them safe, their minds must be 
improved to a certain degree." On the same page he declared: 

" The influence over government must be shared among all the 
people. If every individual which composes their mass participates 
in the ultimate authority, the government will be safe : because the 
corrupting the whole mass will exceed any private resources of 
wealth ; and public ones cannot be provided but by levies on the 
people. In this case every man would have to pay his own price. 
The government of Great Britian has been corrupted because but 
one man in ten has a right to \'ote for members of Parliament. 
The sellers of the government, therefore, get nine-tenths of their 
price clear." 

For a period of more than fifty years, seemingly without a mo- 
ment's misgiving, Jefiferson proclaimed this political gospel of 
popular self-government. Many of the half-hearted republicans of 
his time favored some vestiges of hereditary or aristocratic or ex- 
clusive institutions. Jefiferson never compromised with any of 
these opinions. Early in his career he wrote to General Washington, 
"Experience h-as shown that the hereditary branches of modern 
government are the patrons of privilege and prerogative." Since 
he wrote those words, the world has had a further experience of 
such an hereditary institution as the British House of Lords, 
through an added century and a quarter ; and Mr. Jefiferson "s views 
remain so sound and judicious that they might have been written 
yesterday. "The true foundation of republican government," he 
wrote at a later period, "is the equal right of every citizen in his 
person and property, and in their management." 

It must be remembered that the idea of an unrestricted suffrage 
was a very novel one at the beginning of the nineteenth century. 
What Mr. Jefiferson's views had always been he made clear in a 
letter to a citizen of Virginia which he Wx'ote in 1800. He explained 
that the new constitution of Virginia has been formed when he was 
absent attending a session of Congress ; and then he added, " Had 
I been here (in Virginia), I should probably have proposed a gen- 
eral suffrage because my opinion has always been in favor of it." 
In notes and proposals for Virginia constitutions at several earlier 
periods, Mr. Jefferson had not wholly ignored the prevailing senti- 
ment in favor of a property qualification. But he had practically 
nullified such a limitation by admitting any man who was liable to 
militia duty. I must not dwell tediously upon this point, although 



20 

to my mind it has a significance not merely historical or academic, 
but practical in a concrete and immediate sedse. Mr. Jefferson's 
arguments for a large electorate were many-sided, and they were to 
my mind as a whole unanswerable. But it would be highly unjust 
to his doctrine of the suffrage to say that he proclaimed the efficacy 
of universal suffrage at all times and under all circumstances, as 
sure to work out good results. 

As a general maxim, he was ever proclaiming the inherent right, 
and also the advantage, of self-government. But he was a statesman, 
and he recognized facts in any given situation. And so his maxims 
about self-government presup;)osed a certain degree of preparation 
and fitness. Thus, after he had purchased Louisiana from France, 
he did not for a moment allow his well-known philosophy of the 
right of self-government to obscure his practical judgment as to the 
immediate work in hand. In December, 1803, he wrote to DeWitt 
Clinton as follows: "Although it is acknowledged that our new 
fellow-citizens in Louisiana are as yet as incap.ible of self-government 
as children, yet sjme in Congress cannot bring themselves to sus- 
pend its principles for a single moment. The temporary or territo- 
rial government of that country, therefore, will encounter great dif- 
ficulty." 

Two or three years before that, in a letter to John Breckinridge, 
he pointed out a radical difference between our American people 
and the pei:)ple of France, in that, while our countrymen are ini- 
pres.s.ed from their cradle with the sacredness of the law of majority 
rule, the people of France, on the other hand, to quote his e.xact 
words, "have never been in the habit of self-government, and 
are not yet in the habit of acknowledging that fundamental law of 
nature by which alone self-government can be exercised by a so- 
ciety — I mean the lex major is partis." Mr. Jefferson, of course, 
had no doubt whatever as to the applicability in due time of the 
principles of self-government in Louisiana on the one hand and in 
France on the other. He did not waive his ideal, but merely rec- 
ognized the necessity of preliminary processes. 

In his later years he came more and more to point out the need 
of character and intelligence in the individual citizen. Thus, in 
commenting in a letter to a foreign correspondent, in 18 14. on a 
new constitution that had been drawn up for .Spain, he wrote: 
"There is one provision which will immortalize its inventors. It 
is that which after a certain epoch disfranchises every citizen who 
cannot read and write. This is new, and is the fruitful germ of the 



21 

improvement of everything good, and the correction of everything 
imperfect in the present constitution. This will give you an enhght- 
ened people and an energetic public opinion." 

And I might make other citations, showing an acceptance by Mr. 
Jefferson of the plan of an educational restriction. In this there 
was nothing inconsistent with his previous arguments in favor of a 
wide extension of the franchise. The system against which he had 
l^een fighting was one which tended towards the perpetuation of 
privileged classes in the community. The educational qualification, 
as he favored it, had no such tendency. Its object was not to make 
permanent exclusion of the masses from an equal part in the work 
and privilege of government, but rather to provide an added incen- 
tive to diligence and effort on the part of every young man to fit 
himself to meet the tests. 

There has been a period in our recent history during which more 
honor has been paid to Jefferson's general maxims than to his prac- 
tical statesmanship. It was precisely because he believed so deeply 
in the people and in theif- essential equality of rights and of legal 
status, that he attached so much importance to the work of making 
them fit to be entrusted with the exercise of their natural rights as 
members of the political community. Thus Jefferson .vould have 
said— if I have any understanding of the principles of his states- 
manship — that it was the great business of the people of America, 
in the critical period after the year 1865, not to confer the franchise 
indiscriminately upon all comers, but rather to seek by every means 
and by every sacrifice to qualify all comers — and especially their 
children— for the future exercise of the franchise in an intelligent 
and responsible manner. 

I do not think then, that we have paid the highest honor to Jef- 
fersonian principles in the North by admitting to the franchise hun- 
dreds of thousands, if not millions, of foreigners unable to speak 
the English language, densely ignorant of our forms of govern- 
ment, and to a large extent unable to read even the Latinic dialects 
or the Slavonic jargons of the regions from which they have come. 
It is not strange, under such circumstances, that the government of 
our great cities has been corru])! and inefficient. The conditions 
of immigration in Jefferson's time were so different that, while he 
made many observations on the subject that still possess value, 
there is not much in his writings of direct application to our recent 
and present experiences on that score. It may be clearly inferred, 
however, that Mr. Jefferson would have favored some measure to 



22 

restrict the coming of undesirable immigrants in excessive num- 
bers; and it is even more fairly to be inferred that he would ha\e 
extended the franchise to such immigrants only upon evidence in 
each individual case of the possession of proper knowledge and ca- 
pacity to take part in the government of American communities. 

With respect to pending franchise questions in the Southern 
States,! have no word of a controversial nature to utter. An electo- 
rate once broadened to the utmost possible limits is a difficult thing 
to contract. The ultimate aim of statesmanship, doubtless, should 
be the broadening of the base of popular government. But I do 
not think there is any gain in a hastening of the process. 

After all, Mr. Jefferson's greatest contribution to the system of 
democracy as applied in practice was his doctrine of the relation of 
the government to education. He believed that the community as 
a whole should confer upon every child the opportunity to acquire 
a common education, and such practical knowledge as would best 
fit it for its place in the industrial and political community. To his 
mind this was the best way to meet the inequalities of wealth and 
condition that otherwise would disturb the equilibrium of a demo- 
cratic state. If he had lived to our day, and had found large ele- 
ments of population unqualified to exercise the electoral franchise, 
he would doubtless have advised such groups or factors that their 
true interests lay in other directions than politics and government. 
But with equal emphasis he would have urged upon the commun- 
ity at large the still more important fact that there must be extra- 
ordinary effort used to elevate every part of the citizenship of the 
country. 

All classes, races, and nationalities must inevitably sufter some 
harm and loss through the degradation of any single element or 
factor of the population; and, on the other hand, each element of 
the community must experience some distinct gain as a result of 
every effort made to improve the intelligence and general condition 
of any other element or factor. Happily, there are not wanting 
the signs that the country is coming to an understanding of this 
fact. The most eager pupils of our public schools in New York, 
Chicago and many other Northern cities are the hundreds of thou- 
sands of children from the homes of parents who do not speak the 
English language. The lives of American statesmen and the prin- 
ciples of American government form the themes and topics that 
more than all others attract and inspire those sons of Italian, Rus- 
sian Polish and Hungarian parents in the tenement quarters of New 



23 

York and Chicago, as they throng the free circulating libraries for 
books, and as they meet in their boys' clubs and debating societies. 
I have no doubt whatever as to the useful future of these boys as 
American voters, although I have had many misgivings as to the 
propriety of enfranchising their fathers. 

There was danger, a few years ago, lest these schools might give 
to the children of hard-working though ignorant immigrants just 
enough smattering of book knowledge and just enough contact 
with people of better economic and social conditions than their pa- 
rents, to spoil them for the places they ought to fill. Careful in- 
vestigation twelve or fifteen years ago convinced me that along with 
the immeasurable good our public schools were accomplishing, they 
were also doing some serious, though incidental harm. They were 
detaching the sons of immigrants from manual pursuits, while not 
helping them to anything better. But the schools are not adapt- 
ing themselves to the new conditions they have to meet, and they 
are everywhere giving emphasis to the idea of the great dig- 
nity and value of labor, while more and more they are combin- 
ing manual training and the teaching of practical arts with mental 
and moral discipline, and with instruction in language, numbers 
and geography, in drawing, and in the elements of science. Mr. 
Jefiferson's broad schemes of education were scientific enough and 
flexible enough to admit all such later differentiations as the kinder- 
garten and the practical trade school, as well as the older grammar 
school and the university. To Mr. Cabell in 1820 he wrote : 
" Promote in every order of men the degree of instruction propor- 
tioned to their condition and to their views in life." 

Upon nothing was his heart more set than upon the systematic 
ordering of education, so that its benefits might be thoroughly dis- 
tributed. Circumstances have made it possible to carry out his 
views of a state system more perfectly perhaps in such Northwes- 
tern commonwealths as Michigan and Wisconsin than anywhere 
else in this country. And where such systems exist at their best, 
it is wonderful to note their potency in the assimilation of the new 
and seemingly unpromising relays of immigrants that have come in 
recent years from Eastern and Southern Europe. 

The South has responded splendidly of late, at great sacrifice to 
the demand for schools; and I am confident that there will be no 
relaxation of effort. Nevertheless there cannot be too frequent a 
re-reading of the views of Mr. Jefferson upon the importance of 
education, and upon its fundamental place in a democracy. 



24 

His views of the relation of education to the state were adopted 
early in his career, and were propounded with his very latest 
breath. I deem it remarkable that he should have declared in a 
letter to Madison as early as 1787 that the task and function of 
giving " information to the people is the most certain, and the most 
legitimate engine of the government." Even in our own day it 
seems a bold and advanced idea to declare, without any reserve of 
qualification, that education is the first duty and chief function of 
government. The whole civilized world is only now beginning 
cautiously to recast itself upon a glimmering conception of the 
truth of that idea. Mr. Jefferson stated it again in his first inaugu- 
ral message a hundred and three years ago. In 18 10 he wrote to 
John Tyler : 

" I have two great measures at heart, without which no republic 
can maintain itself in strength, i. That of general education, to 
enable every man to judge for himself what will secure or endanger 
his freedom. 2. To divide every county into hundreds, of such 
size that all the children of each will be within reach of a central 
school in it." 

In later writings he advocated a special tax for the creation and 
maintenance of his system of schools graded from the primary 
classes to the university. His vindication of the duty of the com- 
munity to draw by taxation upon the resources of the rich to pay 
for the schooling of the poor was so complete that nobody has ever 
been able to improve upon it. 

And this doctrine of his, in its various implications, goes to the 
heart of the new social and industrial conditions we see about us in 
this year of grace 1904. The Jeffersonian principle is that the su-' 
preme and imperative duty of the state is the training of the people 
to be good citizens, and useful and capable members of society; 
and again and again is it set forth in the utterances of Mr. Jeffer- 
son that the safety and well-being of the state lie along this path of 
its duty and its burden. 

We have emerged with startling suddenness upon a period of 
undreamt-of industrial combinations, and prodigious aggregations 
of productive capital. There are moments when it seems as if the 
concentrated power of the new industrial society is becoming .so 
great that it must subordinate to its purposes the organs and agen- 
cies of the political society. In many particular instances, tempo- 
rarily at least, such subordination has been too visible to be denied. 
The only remedy lies in the training of the individual citizen. In- 



25 

dustrial combinations will work evil, or they will work good, ac- 
cording as the community itself is prepared to shape them to the 
common advantage. 

It is not true that the man is diminishing in importance as com- 
pared with the dollar. Fortunately, just the opposite is demon- 
strably the case. The new industrial cDmbinations rest even more 
necessarily upon the cooperation of talent and skill than upon the 
dead weight of united capital alone. There never was a time when 
it so much behooved the young man to invest in himself, and when 
the relative value of personal training and acquired aptitude was so 
great in comparison with that of accumulated capital. 

The ultimate goal in a democracy is not strife and discord, but 
political harmony and concord ; and it is similarly true that in the 
economic life of the community the better hopes reach far beyond 
the wastefulness and strife of the old competitive system, and de- 
mand the substitution for it of cooperative methods and scientific 
organization. We are certainly entering upon a period of unified 
effort, from which there can be no return to the competitive system 
as it has existed heretofore. 

And respecting this new and close organization of industry sev- 
eral methods of future control are readily conceivable. One 
method is that of control by individuals, or by syndicates composed 
of comparatively k\v men whose fortunes can be told in hundreds 
or thousands of millions. A second method is that of the radical 
enlargement of the functions of the political community, so that 
the people themselves, organized as the state, may assume control, 
one after another, of the great businesses and industries of the 
country. A third method is tliat of the gradual distribution of the 
shares of stock of industrial corporations among the workers them- 
selves and the people at large, until in one industry after another 
there shall have come into being something like a true cooperative 
system managed on public representative principles quite analagous 
to the carrying on of our political institutions. Mr. Jefferson de- 
clared himself clearly and strongly against any arbitrary limitation 
of individual wealth. He was willing to have governmental ex- 
periments tried, and was not, as many people suppose, the apostle 
of the unqualified doctrine that government is a necessary evil, 
that the best government is the one that governs least, and in any 
case the functions of government should be negative rather than 
positive. The tendency of his teaching was, indeed, toward as 
little interference in industrial afiairs on the part of government as 



26 

circumstances would perniit. This, however, was always subject 
in his teaching to the broad principle that the object of government 
is to promote the well-being and happiness of the greater number 
and that its practical functions may therefore be varied from time to 
time to meet new conditions. 

Thus, all the new functions of municij)al government, in a period 
when the majority are coming to live under urban conditions, are 
strictly in harmony with the JefFersonian teaching. If the common 
welfare should sometime in the future demand the municipal opera- 
tion of street railways, or even the national ownership and opera- 
tion of the general railroad system, surely the shade of Mr. Jeffer- 
son would not arise to utter any warning whatever. 

In his own day he observed that strong men as a rule make their 
own fortunes, and that under our laws of inheritance wealth tends 
in the third or fourth generation towards a distribution that robs it 
of any particular danger to the less fortunate members of the com- 
munity.. There is no reason at this moment to regard Mr. lefiferson's 
opinion on that subject as out of date. The municipal election in 
Chicago the other day turned upon the question of the relations of 
quasi-public corporations to the interests and welfare of the people 
themselves ; and the citizenship of that great town expressed itself at 
the polls with a higher degree of untrammeled freedom, and a 
greater capacity for self-determined action than has ever been shown 
in any previous period of town life in the history of the United 
States. 

In other words, Jefferson's dictum holds perfectly good to-day 
that our governmental safety lies in nimibers; and that concentrated 
wealth, whether in individual or corporate hands, cannot possibly 
in the long run take away any of the liberties or rights of an en- 
franchised people intelligent enough to know what it wants. We 
must to some extent pass tiirough the phase of industrial control at 
the hands of individuals holding disproportionate wealth and power;, 
but this can last only a little time. The growth of the general 
wealth of the country is at a higher rate than the aggregation -of 
riches in the hands of multi-millionaires. 

There was a time when the man of moderate fortune could afford 
to be without any training for a place in the professional or business 
world. But the fixed fortune now yields much less income; while 
the newer demands of life require a larger outgo. Even the skilled 
laborer has steadily shortening hours and constantly increasing 
wages. The future belongs clearly to the workers, and they in due 



27 

time will become the associated capitalists. I believe it will come 
to be a matter of comparative indifference whether the political 
society that we call the state gradually absorbs the industrial organ- 
ization, or whether the two shall run on indefinitely side by side. 
In either case the principles of democracy must have a higher 
potency than ever; and more than ever they must rest upon the 
basis of a universal training for citizenship and for honorable mem- 
bership in the local and the general community. " One good gov- 
ernment," Jefferson observed, " is a blessing to the whole world " — 
having reference to its illuminating example. In 1823, in a letter 
to Albert Gallatin, he declared, with a wisdom that the flight of 
years only serves to illustrate, ' ' The advantages of representative 
government, exhibited in England and America, and recently in 
other countries, will procure its establishment everywhere in a more 
or less perfect form ; and this will insure the amelioration of the 
condition of the world. It will cost years of blood and be well 
worth them." 

I have taken far too much of your time this evening, but my 
apology lies wholly in this, that I have been drawing from a foun- 
tain of great depth and purity, from whose refreshment I find it 
hard to turn away. Let me conclude, then, with one more quota- 
tion from Thomas Jefferson, which I must commend to the doubters 
and pessimists, and which seems to me to embody as much political, 
economic, and ethical wisdom, applicable to present conditions, as 
any other single utterance from the pen of any other American 
statesman. What I am about to read was written by Mr. Jefferson 
in 1817 to a friend in France, M. de Marbois: 

"I have much confidence that we shall proceed successfully for 
ages to come, and that, contrary to the principle of Montesquieu, 
it will be seen that, the larger the extent of country the more firm 
its republican structure, if founded, not on conquest, but in princi- 
ples of compact and equality. My hope of its duration is built 
much on the enlargement of the resources of life, going hand in 
hand with the enlargement of territory, and the belief that men are 
disposed to live honestly, if the means of doing so are open to 
them." 



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